Phys.org October 12, 2021 Irradiated graphite waste management is one of the major challenges of nuclear power-plant decommissioning throughout the world and significantly in the UK, France, and Russia. Researchers in the UK developed an electrochemical decontamination approach in a high-temperature molten salt medium which was applied to irradiate UK Magnox grade graphite, fixed on the working electrode immersed in LiCl–KCl eutectic at 723 K. By selecting the appropriate value of the absolute magnitude of current and the number of transitions between positive and negative current, substantial removal of radionuclide contamination from the graphite was achieved. Up to 80% reduction […]
Tag Archives: S&T UK
AI may predict the next virus to jump from animals to humans
Science Daily September 28, 2021 Researchers in the UK developed machine learning models that identify candidate zoonoses solely using signatures of host range encoded in viral genomes. Within a dataset of 861 viral species with known zoonotic status, their approach outperformed models based on the phylogenetic relatedness of viruses to known human-infecting viruses distinguishing high-risk viruses within families that contain a minority of human-infecting species. The model predictions suggested the existence of generalizable features of viral genomes that are independent of virus taxonomic relationships and that may preadapt viruses to infect humans. Their model reduced a second set of 645 […]
Global satellite data shows clouds will amplify global heating
Phys.org July 19, 2021 Researchers in the UK used data from Earth observations and climate model simulations to develop a statistical learning analysis of how clouds respond to changes in the environment. They showed that global cloud feedback is dominated by the sensitivity of clouds to surface temperature and tropospheric stability. Considering changes in just these two factors, they were able to constrain global cloud feedback to 0.43 ± 0.35 W⋅m−2⋅K−1 (90% confidence), implying a robustly amplifying effect of clouds on global warming and only a 0.5% chance of Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity below 2 K. The “cloud feedback” is the […]
Novel coronavirus discovered in British bats
Science Daily July 19, 2021 Researchers in the UK have identified and sequenced a novel sarbecovirus (RhGB01) from a British horseshoe bat at the western extreme of the rhinolophid range. Their results extend both the geographic and species ranges of sarbecoviruses and suggest their presence throughout the horseshoe bat distribution. Within the spike protein receptor binding domain, but excluding the receptor binding motif, RhGB01 has a 77% (SARS-CoV-2) and 81% (SARS-CoV) amino acid homology. While apparently lacking hACE2 binding ability, and hence unlikely to be zoonotic without mutation, RhGB01 presents opportunity for SARS-CoV-2 and other sarbecovirus homologous recombination. Their findings […]
Meringue-like material could make aircraft as quiet as a hairdryer
Pys.org June 18, 2021 Researchers in the UK have developed an ultralight graphene oxide (GO)/polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) aerogel (GPA) with hierarchical and tunable porosity embedded in a honeycomb scaffold. The aerogels have an enhanced ability to dissipate sound energy, with an extremely low density of 2.10 kg m−3. They experimentally evaluated and optimised the effects of composition and thickness on sound absorption, and sound transmission losses. Then employed a semi-analytical approach to evaluate the effect of different processing times on acoustic properties and assessed the relationships between the acoustic and non-acoustic properties of the materials. Over the 400–2500 Hz range, […]
Scientists develop the ‘evotype’ to unlock power of evolution for better engineering biology
Phys.org June 8, 2021 Researchers in the UK have developed the concept of the evotype to help biological engineers both harness, design, and capture the evolutionary potential of a biosystem. The evotype can be broken into three key parts: Variation, Function, and Selection, with each of these offering a tuning knob for bioengineers to control the possible paths available to evolution. Many of the tools already available to bioengineers fitted nicely into their framework when considered from an evolutionary perspective. Their concept of the evotype not only provides a means for developing biotechnologies that can harness evolution in new ways, […]
Scientists unravel noise-assisted signal amplification in systems with memory
Phys.org May 27, 2021 Signals can be amplified by an optimum amount of noise, but stochastic resonance (SR) is a fragile phenomenon. To investigate the role of memory for this phenomenon an international team of researchers (the Netherlands, UK) used an oil-filled microcavity which, driven by a continuous wave laser, has memory in its nonlinear optical response. Modulating the cavity length while adding noise to the driving laser, they observed a peak in the transmitted signal-to-noise ratio as a function of the noise variance. Through simulations, they reproduced their observations and extrapolated that the SR bandwidth could be approximately 3000 […]
Folding 2D materials gives them new properties useful for quantum communications
Nanowerk May 24, 2021 The use of 2D materials for nonlinear optics are limited by intrinsically small light-matter interaction length and (typically) flat-lying geometries. Researchers in the UK arranged 2D sheets of tungsten (WS2) in a new way to create a 3D arrangement they called a nanomesh. Its unique characteristics are the result of the specific synthesis process they developed. Only light with energy larger than the energy gap can interact with the material in a useful way. If new energy levels are introduced inside this energy gap, the doubling of frequency of the light that passes through the material […]
Agents that target viral RNA could be the basis for next generation anti-viral drugs
EurekAlert May 10, 2021 The technique proposed by a team of researchers in the UK uses cylindrically shaped molecules which can block the function of a particular section at one end of the RNA strand called untranslated RNA that are essential for regulating the replication of the virus. They contain junction points and bulges which are normally recognised by proteins or other pieces of RNA. The cylindrical molecules are attracted to these holes. Once they slide into them, the RNA closes around them, forming a precise fit, which consequently will interfere with the virus’s ability to replicate. According to the […]
‘Bat-sense’ tech generates images from sound
Phys.org April 30, 2021 Full 3D information based on echo-location requires some form of scanning of the scene to provide the spatial location of the echo origin-points. Without this spatial information, imaging objects in 3D is a challenging task as the inverse retrieval problem is strongly ill-posed. Researchers in the UK showed that the temporal information encoded in the return echoes that are reflected multiple times within a scene is sufficient to faithfully render an image in 3D. Numerical modelling and an information theoretic perspective proved the concept and provided insight into the role of the multipath information. They experimentally […]